In Brazil the year 2000 began with escalating political crises just as the country was preparing to commemorate its 500-year anniversary. (See Sidebar.) On January 18 Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso fired Élcio Álvares, Brazil’s first civilian minister of defense, owing to fallout from a December 1999 luncheon of 600 current and former military officers in Rio de Janeiro. At the luncheon—which was held in support of Air Force Comdt. Brig. Walter Bräuer, who had been sacked by Álvares after alleging that the minister was involved in drug trafficking—many in attendance sharply criticized the Cardoso administration. Cardoso was angered by Álvares’s failure to take action or make any public statement regarding the event. The controversy subsided after Cardoso appointed former government legal counsel Geraldo Quintão the new minister of defense. Quintão was sworn in on January 24.

During a special session of Congress in January, the federal government moved quickly to pass the Fiscal Responsibility Law (FRL). With municipal elections looming in October, Cardoso signed the FRL into law in May. The FRL capped government salaries, set fines for officeholders who violated those ceilings, prohibited state governors from increasing budgets unless there was a rise in tax revenues, and excluded the federal government from bailing out states and municipalities.

February brought resolutions to some of the fiduciary fiascoes of 1999. Gov. Itamar Franco of Minas Gerais ended his state’s 13-month moratorium on debt payments by making final payments on Eurobonds and rescheduling debt obligations to the federal government. Also, former central bank president Francisco Lopes was indicted for having used public resources for personal gain during the January 1999 devaluation when the central bank sold currency to small private banks at privileged rates.

Just as the legislative session opened on February 15 with Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) leading the largest party bloc, debate ensued over raising the minimum wage. In late March Cardoso issued a decree raising the monthly minimum salary from 136 reais to 151 reais (1 real = about $0.51). The federal government later passed legislation permitting state and municipal governments to make upward adjustments.

On March 24 Mayor Celso Pitta of São Paulo was thrown out of office by the São Paulo regional court after testimony from his ex-wife. She provided evidence that he used 800,000 reais to buy votes on the city council in order to prevent his impeachment. The Supreme Justice Tribunal in Brasília, however, paved the way for Pitta to be reinstated after ruling that only the city council could remove him from office. Court battles over his status continued throughout the year, but Pitta remained in office.

Cardoso’s most troubling scandal of 2000 emerged on April 24 when Judge Nicolau dos Santos Neto fled authorities after a warrant for his arrest had been issued. Santos Neto was charged with siphoning off 169 million reais intended for construction of the regional courthouse of São Paulo. The judge’s telephone records led investigators to former secretary-general of the presidency Eduardo Jorge Caldas Pereira. As manager of Cardoso’s 1998 reelection campaign, Caldas Pereira allegedly had used his influence to lobby for disbursements for the courthouse. Payments were made to Santos Neto and businessman Luis Estevão, who was elected senator in 1998. For his role in the courthouse scam, the Senate stripped Estevão of his seat and revoked his parliamentary immunity and political rights for 151/2 years.

After Caldas Pereira gave testimony to Congress on August 3, plans to move forward with a parliamentary board of inquiry started to lose momentum. On September 13 the committee charged with investigating the scandal dissolved until after the October elections. Nevertheless, faced with the mounting pressures from recent scandals, Cardoso on August 21 launched Transparent Brazil, an anticorruption package designed to better monitor public spending and improve public service by instituting a code of ethics.

The rift between Cardoso and Gov. Itamar Franco heightened in September when Franco failed to deter members of the landless movement from occupying a 1,100-ha (2,700-ac) farm owned by the Cardoso family in Minas Gerais. For the second time since May, the farm was surrounded as the movement launched a national offensive to occupy farmland and seek liberation of the 2,150,000,000 reais budgeted by the federal government for land reform. More than 300 federal policemen and elite army troops were called to the farm. On September 14, after issuing Cardoso a 12-hour ultimatum for removing federal troops, Franco obtained a Supreme Court injunction ordering the troops to leave. Supreme Court Minister Nelson Jobim delayed the ruling, however, and on September 15 the landless left the area.

The Brazilian economy showed mixed signs of improvement. The stock market hit an all-time high early in the year, closing at 18,053 on January 17. The central bank’s open-market committee continued its policy of gradually reducing the interest rate, lowering it in several rate declinations from 19.5% in January to 16.5% in June, where it remained unchanged through mid-November—its lowest level since 1986. The central bank also eased credit restrictions by lowering the compulsory reserves of bank deposits it held from 65% to 45%. Inflation was expected to remain within the range of 6–8% agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund. Despite the country’s improving monetary policy, in 1999—the latest year for which statistics were available—average per capita income shrank 5.5% and taxation as a share of gross domestic product reached 30.3%, up from 29.9% in 1998.

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